Beyond Thirty
by 2DaughtersOfAthena
Summary: Hermione Granger is struggling to come to grips with turning thirty, and it isn't just about the number itself. Love seems impossible to her. And she doesn't believe anyone can drag her out of the hole she seems to have dug her youth into.


**Ravenclaw HoH, Themed, Prompt: Cloudy with a chance of rain, WC: 2178**

 **AU, Muggledom. Because that's me, isn't it? For the last time this year for the Houses Copmetition. See you all next year!**

 **For the rest of ye readers, I'm about to enter mad exam season again. And we know how that affected Pirate Ship. I should be back on the ball in about two months time, but in the meantime I will be prepping myself for a summer of writing and painting! Have a good one!**

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Cloudy with a chance of rain. That was the weather prediction for today, on my thirtieth birthday. Really highlights exactly what the next thirty years are going to look like.

Overcast, with a suffocating pressure to be productive despite a severe lack of sunshine.

I glance out of the window again, through a small crack in the curtains, hoping for a ray of sunshine to burst a golden hand into my bedroom. No such luck. The blue dullness of the day is foreshadowing the rest of my miserable life. So, instead of getting up, I change the channel from the news and sit back for a delightfully boring Sunday watching television in bed. I fully expect to remain in my pyjamas for the rest of the day.

Just as I'm sinking back into my mass of duvets, the phone blares to life beside me. Its shrieking ringtone dizzies me, and I am already hateful of whoever is calling on this ridiculous day, no matter who they are. Ringing in the morning of my thirtieth birthday, cloudy with a chance of rain, far too early to be acceptable.

"Hello?" I croak into the receiver. It crackles back in response. "Hello, is anyone there?"

The sound bursting through my eardrums is enough to make me hold the landline about ten feet away from my face.

 _"HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!"_

"Oh, please no," I groan.

 _"YOU LOOK LIKE A MONKEY… AND YOU SMELL LIKE ONE TOO!"_

Great. Just great. The morning, birthday Weasley phone call. I pull the duvet closer over me, a chill emanating from the half-closed windows. Maybe I should have thought to close them properly last night – but maybe I had been expecting the weather to be a little warmer – for the sun to actually come out for my birthday, and my thirtieth one no less. However, no such luck. Even the weather agrees that today isn't going to be either a good or a productive day.

"Thank you," I murmur into the phone, willing sleep to give me a reason to hang up. "Happy Birthday to me, indeed. May I ask why you're calling on this horrible, horrible day?"

"Come on, Hermione, it's not _that_ bad!" Fred Weasley shouts down the phone. I shrivel into my hovel of quietness. "I mean, I'm already thirty. And you have to come and celebrate with the best of us."

"I'm not really in the -"

A burst of laughing sounds from the other end of the line, as if today were a good day.

Fred shuffles through the people – I hear it through the phone.

"Look, can I come over at least? I won't bring the others – just me. I have your present." His voice errs on pleading, which I know is a farce, but I can't help myself. I tell him that it's fine. "Great, I'll come by about two pm. That'll give you time to grumble about being old and make yourself all pretty for the afternoon."

"Yes, fine, thanks, see you later!" Fred tries to interrupt me, but I click the end button and hear the dial tone to my great relief.

I have until two o'clock this afternoon for freedom, then I will be rudely intruded upon by a red-haired Weasley. For now, instead of immediately wallowing in sadness about the end of my youth, I change the channel again to _Blue Planet_ , and decide to just watch the penguins for a while, dancing in swirling patterns in their aquamarine habitat. It's relaxing but doesn't stop the overwhelming tension about my age.

Fred is right, however. He is older than me. He's already gone past the day of becoming thirty. I don't think that's the point, however.

He's successful. Somewhat good looking. Very funny. A prominent and vaguely desirable citizen.

I'm just me.

The afternoon rolls around a lot quicker than I had first anticipated. The clouds don't pass the houses by, and I know that the sunshine isn't going to burst through the dim clouds that cover the atmosphere. Instead, the greyness sits. It hangs about like a miasma in the air. Suddenly, it's two pm and Fred Weasley is knocking on my door in quite a ridiculous fashion.

"It's open," I call back to him, running my hands through my hair. It's frizzy, as always, but I've tried – to no avail – to set it sleek for the afternoon. For Fred. God knows I have this insane crush on him. He slams the door behind him as I come through to the front room. "Wow. You're dressed up."

"You look nice too," he comments, grinning. "I mean, the hair just… Wow."

"I tried to flatten it," I say, suddenly very self-conscious. "Oh, you're not being sarcastic."

Fred just grins back at me and winks. From behind his back he produces a small, rectangular, gift-wrapped box, glinting with blue glitter and my poor lighting. I smile, ever so slightly. _Thirty. Fuck._ This gift is maybe a symbolism of the gifts that come with women getting older. My hair will go grey, my eyes will clog up, and my womb might as well sew itself shut right now.

"Don't look so tragic, this is just _part_ of the gift. You don't have to open it now." He runs a hand through his hair and glances backwards towards the front door. Suspicious, definitely suspicious. "Let's go for a walk."

Without a second glance back into my apartment, I am suddenly dragged outside.

As expected, being outside is no better than being indoors. I would much rather be inside than in the cool air, stained with grey-blue sky overhead. It all seems rather fitting that I should feel so melancholy on such a nondescript and overcast day. Fred is smiling, which, I suppose, is a good thing. The falling leaves match his flaming hair, glowing oranges and bright yellows, a violent contrast to the dull day. I let my fingers make patterns in the air, drawing words and images that no one else can see. There's a sad beauty to it.

Fred and I trundle along in vague conversation down the soil-trodden path, our hands swinging side by side, drawing our jackets a little closer when the wind breathes down our necks. Every so often he clasps his hands together and twists them nervously. I don't ask, because I'm sick of the day. He glances at me and laughs. I can't decide whether I'm glad he's laughing, or I'm hurt that I'm his provided entertainment for the day.

"Thirty isn't as bad as you think," he says, finally breaking his silence on my big problem. "I'm over thirty, and I'm still cool."

"You're a bloke," I sigh. "This isn't... I'm... Never mind, you wouldn't understand anyway." The words die on my lips. I don't want to cry, but there is the familiar pricking at the corner of my eyes, a tightening in the centre of my chest. Desperate, I try to remember those breathing methods I learnt many years ago - following a wave to rest my palpitations, centering myself to the very core of the Earth.

Fred stops where he stands, two paces ahead of me.

"Explain it to me."

"I don't need to," I tell him, hating my racing heart and the panic rising like bile. He's not moving. "I'm thirty years old, Fred."

"And I'm -"

" _It doesn't matter what you are_ \- you're different! You've got potential and a future, I'm just withering away into dust and - and I'm not even close to being married! My child-bearing years have been and gone. I wasted my youth studying, and now I will never have a family!"

Silence falls between us as Fred balks. I don't think he was expecting my outburst.

"You never wasted anything studying," he murmurs. "You have a great job, and you're brilliantly intelligent."

Above us, the misty blue sky cracks, and the hot, awful feeling in my chest is amplified by the rain. It crashes onto the ground, too noisy, too damp, too much for me. But I can't escape the rain, even if I can temporarily escape Fred's gaze. His heavy look is exhausting, as if he is finally peering into my very heart. As if he can finally see the part of me that I hide from so many others.

I hate that I'm not even a little drunk right now.

"No one is going to fall madly in love with me now," I utter into the silence. _Cloudy with a chance of rain. Yeah, a fucking shit-ton of rain_. "No one is going to choose me over countless prettier, younger, fitter girls. No one is going to want the old maid that..." I falter. "I'm past my prime - please stop laughing at me."

"You are mad sometimes, Hermione," Fred grins, clearly not noticing my distress. "People _love_ you."

"Not like that." I push my hair away from my face, suddenly feeling too hot. "You love me, but you don't love me like that. Even you don't love me like that. Why not?"

"I like you too much."

It's the most ludicrous answer in the world, and he gives me nothing beyond that. No sense of a smile that might have been, or a glance that could mean more than the exact words that spilled from his lips. He likes me too much to love me? Does he mean that he _likes_ me? My mind half sprints to thoughts of us calling out love and kissing in the sweet-tasting blue rain. Except, that's not what this is at all.

The rain is cold, and I'm far too warm. The air tastes like pollution - gas, and dirt, and ash - and my lips are dried despite the wet weather. There are crinkles around my eyes from squinting at the diminishing daylight, and Fred's hair is plastered to his face. It isn't like the movies at all.

If it were the movies, Fred Weasley would be in love with me, and I'd be an attractive thirty year old with something to live for other than her work. I wouldn't be Hermione Granger, who lives for her job, with regular parents, an odd friendship with a red-headed family, with a larger-than-life crush on her best friend's brother who just so happens to spend a large portion of his time with her. Hermione Granger, who works a boring job, to supply her with the necessities for life - nothing more.

There isn't one thing interesting enough about me to put in a movie.

I'm nothing.

I pull my jacket tighter around myself and turn on the spot, thinking that I will most certainly go back home now. Life isn't like those glorious movies, and it isn't like the books that we read late at night. I'm no Nick Carraway, on a stark path to discovering the traumas of being a youth, compared to adulthood. Nick Carraway was never so lucky to be a thirty-year-old woman, her life behind her. My life isn't borne onto a ceaseless, fulfilled life beyond today.

Beyond today, I can't see much.

 _Cloudy with a chance of rain._ If it's symbolism for the next thirty years of my life, then does it mean I will always be on the precipice of the metaphorical rain? I will always be somewhere between the glorious sunshine and the painful cold of the rain. And it makes me frustrated.

"What the hell does that even mean, Fred Weasley?" I shout back, walking away from him. I almost hope he doesn't follow me. My canvas shoes splatter water up the sides of my legs, the dark blue of my jeans made worse. Muck traces the bottoms of the trousers, sticking to my legs, sticking to me. I should have slept through today, then I could just wake up thirty and not had to live through the transitionary day.

Tears prick at the corners of my eyes. I hate that I'm not sure whether it has to do with my age, or whether it is something to do with being so irrevocably in love with someone who seems determined to not love me back. I feel as though I've been in love with Fred for thirty years, having gravitated towards him for a long time now. Realistically, it was since his family had taken me in during the holidays away from boarding school.

It's endlessly awful knowing that I'm older every day, and every day he will want me less. And the longer I wait - intentionally or otherwise - the less others will be interested in me, too. And I know it may seem unlikely that I should feel this poorly because of a silly crush, but this is a man who has always made me feel worth the time of day.

 _Hermione Granger shouldn't base her life goals on being loved by the man she loves._

But I really can't help it.

He's not chasing after me. I wouldn't expect him to. This isn't the movies.

It never is going to be.

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 **This story is possibly going to be turned into something more. But I guess that depends on the feedback. Let me know :)**


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